The 1-2-3-4-5-6 Opportunity

by Robert Perkis / Lotto-Logix

Lottery experts of all stripes seem to agree 1-2-3-4-5-6 is
not the best combination to play if you want to win a lot of
money.

So what happens when you look at your lottery wheel pointer
numbers and (horrors) see 1-2-3-4-5-6 (oh my) and worse yet
see 7-8-9-10-11-12 (my goodness) or even 13-14-15-16-17-18
(good grief)?

Actually seeing these combinations means you're looking at a
good wheel for playing lotto, as you will see.

Wheels are great, they are the one part of lotto playing that
is totally reliable to do exactly (no worse than) what their
test results promise and often do better.

When we play a 3if or 4if wheel, we hope for a 4# or 5# and
wish for a 6# prize which is always possible if all 6 of the
winning numbers fall among those we are wheeling.

The trouble is, we're putting all our faith on the wheel to
play above its guarantee and doing nothing to help ourselves.

When we toss numbers onto a wheel, even when we filter for
gross probabilities, we fail to take the last available step
toward winning a jackpot. We have a missed opportunity to
hand create a winning combination.

Now I know we all work within a budget. We all know not to
put our eggs into one basket and would like to spread our
lottery playing strategies around. How nice to be able to
play some tight wheels and some big loose ones and some groups
of all the numbers on eight or nine lines, maybe even work in
some zone, positional or pair wheels, etc.

Truth is, you only need one combination per draw to win and
wheels do nothing toward finding that elusive combination for
you. Sure they guarantee a lower tier prize and a percentage
of coverage for the next tier up, but for a jackpot the wheel
combinations are little or no better than Quick Picks.

My philosophy of wheel building has always been to look for
ways to double up within a wheel without increasing its cost
to play. Here we have pointers . . .

01-02-03-04-05-06-07-08-09-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18
__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__-__
And three of our pointers to be exchanged combinations are
01-02-03-04-05-06 / 07-08-09-10-11-12 / 13-14-15-16-17-18
what a wonderful coincidence.

The pointers are just sitting there waiting for computer
selected numbers to be arbitrarily tossed under them for
wheeling. We are missing the golden opportunity to hand
position our selected numbers under these pointers forming
combinations we predict will win.

It is easier of course to let the software select numbers and
move them over to wheeling, but the software doesn't have any
ideas on combining the numbers, something you can learn to do.

Yes, it takes a few minutes sitting down with hand drawn
charts for frequency, skip an hit and hit position, to attempt
building these predictions for the jackpot. The point is,
there is no drawback to doing so. The wheel's guarantee loses
nothing based on how you sort the numbers under the pointers
before they go onto the matrix.

What if your wheel doesn't have numeric pointer clusters? It
is simple enough to make such wheels in CoverMaster. Just
type in the first few lines and [Edit][Lock][All] before
building the wheel and the finished wheel will include them.

Here is a 3if5of6in18numbers12combinations wheel it took only
seconds to build in CoverMaster.

The wheel matrix alone 100% guarantees us a 3# prize with only
five of the winning numbers among the 18 and at least 2, 3#
prizes with six.

We are playing over a third of the 649 numbers on only 12
combinations with a better than 50/50 shot at a 4# prize when
we have all six winning numbers among the 18.

Where before the above was all we could expect of the wheel
and hope to get lucky. Now we can think of the above as a
simple guaranteed minimum insurance net under our hand built
combinations.

Don't expect to be able to build winning combinations right
from the start, it takes a while for your subconscious to clue
in on what you are trying to do. Like I said, there is no
down side to arranging the numbers you were already going to
play on the wheel into combinations you get a feeling for.